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Biden Should Never Have Debated Trump — and CNN Did Him No Favors
The incumbent president lost face as Jake Tapper and Dana Bash tossed softballs
Should things go the way they seem to be going, the events of Thursday night may go down as the greatest unforced error in presidential electoral politics since Richard Nixon, fatigued and unshaven, went on-camera against John F. Kennedy in 1960. One was that of the format — one to which his campaign, like Trump’s, had agreed: The commitment by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash to simply pose questions and to allow the candidates, rather than the moderators themselves, to do the fact-checking, put him on his back foot before the event began. (Were the stakes not so high, I’d say that they recalled the Mike Myers “Saturday Night Live” character Linda Richman tossing out a notion and then saying “Talk amongst yourselves.”) Tapper and Bash’s questions were unshapely, inelegant, not intended to draw out anything more than conflict.
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